June 6, 2020 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - There is no doubt that colonialism and racism sit at the root of America's domestic problems. The push to dominate others abroad is directly linked to the belief that those who are different at home should also be dominated.

There are still Americans alive today that remember segregation laws that denied black Americans their basic rights and dignity. Before that, there was outright slavery.

Even today, racism is still institutionalized. It also permeates American culture, laying just beneath a superficial layer of tolerance and equality.

This is not just about white people who remain racist against blacks and other minorities - a product of America's terminally ill culture - it is also about fundamental racism that still very much sits at the heart of American foreign and domestic policy - against not only blacks, but virtually every race on the planet from Africans to Asians to even Slavs.

The US is a nation that encourages its people to hate entire groups of people abroad to help justify otherwise unjust wars. Arabs, Chinese people, Russians - are all vilified with bigotry and hatred sanctioned by mainstream American culture. It isn't hard to see why in a nation like this, hatred for other groups is easily justified in the minds of racists and the unjust.

Not Just Police in America - Racism is a Key Feature of US Foreign Policy

It was under US President Barack Obama that the US decimated the North African nation of Libya, deposing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi - a champion of African dignity and progress and the champion of tens of thousands of blacks from all over Africa who travelled to Libya to find work and a better life - work and a better life Gaddafi provided them until he was brutally murdered and his government replaced by heavily armed, racist terrorists backed by the US and its European allies.

US-backed militants in Libya would hunt down Libya's black population, killing them, torturing them, and even enslaving them in open air slave markets - a spectacle one might have believed was unthinkable in the 21st century - but something made possible by America, its foreign policy, and its deeply rooted racism and sense of supremacy - despite having a "black" president at the time.

President Obama is hardly the only one to blame - he simply picked up where others left off - and his successor, US President Donald Trump is simply next in line to carry forward systemic US injustice worldwide. The fact that President Obama was black made no difference and simply helps illustrate how while superficial milestones are waved in America's face - the fundamental rot of injustice, racism, and supremacist thinking persists.

When a nation is able to justify denying one group of people their dignity, worth, and rights as human beings it is a slippery slope that easily leads to other groups likewise being stripped of their humanity and abused.

If Black Lives Matter - They Must Always Matter, Everywhere, All the Time

Any case of police brutality is tragic and needs to be addressed -a problem in its own right. If officers killed George Flyod because he was black, it represents an additional problem that must also be addressed.

If Americans genuinely believe black lives matter - then they need to commit to fighting injustice against them, and all other victims of American racism and supremacy. If they speak up only when it is popular and "trending" it's as good as not speaking up at all.

If they are silent when America is mass murdering blacks overseas, killing brown people across the planet, or attempting to normalize racism against Asians - Chinese people in particular - they are complicit in the very sort of deeply rooted, institutionalized racism that underpins US foreign policy and the globe-spanning industrialized injustice it represents - and the very sort of racism that manifests itself as injustice against blacks at home.

June 4, 2020 (Gunnar Ulson - NEO) - Western Europe (we'll define as France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, and Austria) shows how regions of the world with existing socioeconomic problems have seen Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) simply amplify them while in other regions where fundamentals have been stronger (China and ASEAN), have simply been temporarily setback.

Even within nations, this is also the case, where sectors and industries performing well have merely been set back while others already struggling long before COVID-19 showed up have been dealt a severe blow.

Health Impact

Just looking at the reported number of cases and the reported number of deaths tells us that even deep in the heart of the European Union there is some disparity, whether it is via how testing is done, statistics are gathered and reported, the state of healthcare in each respective nation or some sort of demographic factor being responsible.

Germany and France, for example, had nearly the same number of reported COVID-19 cases, yet France had many, many more reported deaths.

President Donald Trump's pick to lead the US intelligence community said Tuesday that he would focus on China as the country's greatest threat, saying Beijing was determined to supplant the United States' superpower position.

Were China doing this by using news agencies like AFP to lie to the public to justify invading Middle Eastern nations, killing tens of thousands of innocent people, installing client regimes worldwide, and using its growing power to coerce and control nations economically and politically when not outright militarily - US President Donald Trump's "pick" - John Ratcliffe - might be justified in focusing on China and its "determination" to "supplant the United States' superpower position."

However, this is not what China is doing.

China Building Rather than Bombing

China is - instead - using economic progress to rise upon the global stage. It makes things. It builds things. It creates infrastructure to bring these things to others around the globe who need or want them, and enables other nations to make, build, and send things to China.

One example is China's One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR) also referred to as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This includes a series of railways, highways, ports, and other infrastructure projects to help improve the logistical connections between nations, accelerating economic development.

Only in the US could the notion of building railways connecting people within and between nations seem like a dangerous idea.

By building such networks, people are better empowered to trade what they are making and what they seek to buy and sell. China, which possesses the largest high-speed railway network on Earth carrying 2 billion passengers a year, is extending this network beyond its borders - deep into Southeast Asia and even across Eurasia via Russia and beyond. Alongside it are a raft of other projects ranging from ports to power plants, and more.

The political and economic power China is gaining by expanding real economic activity both within its borders and beyond them, and both for China itself as well as for its trading partners - represents a global pivot away from America's century-long unipolar global order and closer toward a now emerging multipolar world order.

The US with a population of over 300 million and some of the best industrial potential in the world could easily pivot with this sea change - but entrenched special interests refuse to do so. Paying into a genuinely pragmatic method of generating wealth and stability exposes Washington and Wall Street's various rackets, making them no longer tenable. So instead, US special interests are labeling China's One Belt, One Road initiative a global threat and China itself as one of America's chief adversaries.

Author's note: This is part of The Covid-19 Chronicles Series covering how nations and regions are responding to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) crisis. May 28, 2020 (Gunnar Ulson - NEO) - Like much of Asia, Eastern Europe appears to have weathered the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) crisis relatively well, at least in terms of overcoming a health crisis.

Total reported infections and deaths have been much lower across these nations, and the Western media has taken turns wondering just how this is possible.

Health ImpactStatistics indicate that Covid-19 has impacted Eastern European nations in about the same manner as the annual flu or common cold. Nations like Belarus have in fact been hit harder by the annual flu than by the recent Covid-19 outbreak. While headlines claimed nations would be scrambling for critical medical equipment including ventilators, Eastern Europe has since had no widespread or widely reported shortages nor reports of overcrowded or overwhelmed healthcare facilities. The table below gives a quick look at the impact of Covid-19 nearly half a year into the supposed "pandemic" and is easily comparable to annual flu burden in each respective nation.

Measures Eastern European nations did indeed put measures in place including the closure of public venues, issuing guidelines regarding social distancing and the use of facemasks. Poland had closed public venues and businesses, restricted public activities including gatherings and instituted the use of face masks, but has since begun easing such measures. In other instances, measures have been so lax that it incurred complaints from neighboring nations.

May 26, 2020 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - When the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) withdrew from a Huawei-sponsored Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) webinar - the ethical grounds it allegedly did so on were ill-defined at best.

The NABJ seemed to hint it was actually pressure on it from various other groups to cancel the webinar that spurred the decision and not any concerns the NABJ itself had with Huawei.

Huawei, a Chinese-based telecommunications firm that has been indicted for racketeering and conspiracy to steal trade secrets, was partnering with the NABJ on an event called “The Rise of Misinformation,” which was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. After receiving pushback for the partnership, the NABJ released a statement on Tuesday announcing the webinar's cancellation after it had "become a distraction."

The article would also complain regarding Huawei that:

The Department of Justice has been wary of Huawei and has urged allies not to work with the company, which the United States alleges violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. In its February indictment, the DOJ pointed to the company’s “long-running practice of using fraud and deception to misappropriate sophisticated technology" from U.S. counterparts and revealed new details about Huawei’s deceptive efforts to evade U.S. sanctions when doing business in North Korea and Iran.

Of course - besides being baseless - US accusations against Huawei stem from the fact the Chinese tech-giant is overtaking US corporations - outperforming them technologically and taking over market shares around the globe from once deeply entrenched US monopolies.

Another complaint is Huawei's alleged violation of illegal sanctions the US has levelled against Iran as part of its attempts to trigger war against Tehran or overthrow the government residing there, triggering yet another endless and destructive - not to mention costly - war in the Middle East.

"Woke" Personalities Suspiciously Mindless, Racist Regarding China

More confusing was political commentator and CNN contributor Van Jones chiming in - applauding the decision to cancel the webinar and insisting he would not have agreed to participate had he known Huawei was a sponsor.

Jones never explains why Huawei's sponsorship was a problem.

For a man who works for a news network guilty of lying the American people into serial wars over the past three decades costing the lives of thousands of US soldiers, the lives of millions of innocent people from North Africa to Central Asia, and squandering trillions of US tax dollars - political motivations rather than any sort of "ethical" concern likely spurred Jones' stance.